Using language like an artist's palette, the Blue Notebooks captures the special moments of everyday being.

Intricately plotted and surprisingly moving, THE BLUE HOUR is T. Jefferson Parker’s most compelling—and satisfying—thriller yet, from the NYT bestselling author and three-time Edgar Award winner. Tim Hess is a semi-retired homicide cop staring at his own death sentence—lung cancer. Time is running out. Thrice divorced and childless, Hess is the classic loner cop—so he’s happy to accept the difficult job offered to him: find and stop a serial killer who’s been abducting beautiful young women in Orange County. His new partner, and boss, is the brash, ambitious Merci Rayborn. She’s unpopular and unloved by her fellow cops, but she’s also relentless, smart and principled. Hess, challenged by the investigation and by his own disease, isn't happy about taking orders from Merci, and he certainly isn't planning for her to fall in love with him… “What distinguishes this moving book are the finely defined characters, the author’s accomplished style (which sketches his Orange County turf and surf in vivid strokes) and the tale’s unexpected twists.” —Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal “The crimes are sickening, the killer is a monster, and the gadgets of destruction are truly bizarre. Solid police work, beefed up with some ingenious devices from Parker’s bottomless bag of tricks, makes it all come out right—but not before the wondrously weird characters have taken this lurid plot to its outer limits.” —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review “Unpredictable and dynamic… far more gripping than your average serial-killer thriller … Sure-handed thriller writer Parker proves ever-surprising.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A richly metaphoric and suspenseful ride to the end … Ah, Parker in top form.” —Kirkus Reviews “Parker pulls off a rare juggling act in The Blue Hour. He combines the fast pacing and titillating elements of a bestseller with the more meaningful searchings of a John Updike novel. Parker is often compared to Michael Connelly because both men write tautly crafted police procedurals. But Parker has only one rival—Thomas Harris—when it comes to averting the clichés of the serial killer book by characterization… . If you’re seeking a thinking man’s bestseller, T. Jefferson Parker is the writer for you.” —Katy Munger, Washington Post Book World “A man much praised doesn’t need more encomiums; but T. Jefferson Parker deserves all he gets. The Blue Hour adds one more chilling thriller to a long, grim, and scary list: ingenious, intricate, complicated yet credible, a real page-turner.” —Eugen Weber, Los Angeles Times “Parker’s best work.” —Edvins Beitiks, San Francisco Examiner “Has enough chills and twists to keep the pages turning, but the real story here is the surprising love match Parker manages to pull off with realistic characters and true emotion. This will be another hit for Parker’s fans and will appeal to Michael Connelly’s as well.” —Rececca House, Library Journal “Takes you where you’ve been and it seems like the first time.” —Richard Fuller, Philadelphia Inquirer

For many nineteenth-century Russians, poetry was woven into everyday life—in conversation and correspondence, scrapbook albums, and parlor entertainments. Blending close literary analysis with social and cultural history, Daria Khitrova shows how poetry lovers of the period all became nodes in a vast network of literary appreciation and constructed meaning. Poetry during the Golden Age was not a one-way avenue from author to reader. Rather, it was participatory, interactive, and performative. Lyric Complicity helps modern readers recover Russian poetry’s former uses and functions—life situations that moved people to quote or perform a specific passage from a poem or a forgotten occasion that created unforgettable verse.

Max Richter: Piano Works presents, for the first time in print, 15 of Max Richter’s piano pieces, suitable for the intermediate pianist. Each piece is accompanied by notes specially written by the composer. This ground-breaking collection represents a unique drawing together of Max Richter’s varied output, embracing his work with the London Philharmonic (Memoryhouse), The Blue Notebooks, Royal Ballet-commissioned Infra and subsequent his acclaimed concept albums. Innovative and imaginative, yet at the same time accessible and easy to play, some of Max Richter's most famous Piano Works are at last available in what will surely become an instant classic collection. This volume includes: - Andras - The Blue Notebooks - Circles from the rue Simon-Crubellier - Departure - The Family - Fragment - From the rue Villin - H in New England - Horizon Variations - INFRA 3 - Leo's Journal - The Tartu Piano - The Twins (Prague) - Vladimir's Blues - Written On The Sky

Published in 1962, Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook merits fresh theoretical, geopolitical, autobiographical, and aesthetic approaches. Prompted by the novel's golden anniversary, the twelve essays collected in this volume provide fresh analyses along with appreciative memoirs for 21st century readers of this well-known masterpiece.

ISABEL DALHOUSIE - Book 4 Nothing captures the charm of Edinburgh like the bestselling Isabel Dalhousie series of novels featuring the insatiably curious philosopher and woman detective. Whether investigating a case or a problem of philosophy, the indefatigable Isabel Dalhousie, one of fiction’s most richly developed amateur detectives, is always ready to pursue the answers to all of life’s questions, large and small. In the fourth installment of this enchanting, beloved series, Isabel Dalhousie, who is now a mother, returns to investigate an irresistible puzzle in the art world. Isabel Dalhousie—the nosiest and most sympathetic philosopher you are likely to meet—now has a son, Charlie, whose doting father Jamie has an intriguing idea to pose to Isabel: marriage. But Isabel wonders if Jamie is too young to be serious? And how would Cat respond? On top of these matters, the ambitious Professor Dove has seized Isabel's position as editor of the Review of Applied Ethics. However, nothing it seems can diminish Isabel's innate curiosity. And when she recognizes that two paintings attributed to a deceased artist have simultaneously appeared on the market, she can't help but think that they're forgeries. So Isabel begins an investigation and soon finds herself diverted from her musings about parenthood and onto a path of inquiry into the soul of an artist.

Bringing together a collection of high-profile authors, Biographies and Space presents essays exploring the relationship between biography and space and how specific subjects are used as a means of explaining sets of social, cultural and spatial relationships. Biographical methods of historical investigation can bring out the authentic voice of subjects, revealing personal meanings and strategies in space as well as providing a means to analyze relations between the personal and the social. Writing about both actual (architectural) and imagined (pictorial) space, the authors consider issues of gender, childhood, sexuality and race, highlighting an increasing fluidity and interaction between theory, methods and history. Biographies and Space is an original and exciting new book, with direct relevance to both architectural and art history.

A Best Book of Summer (The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post) "Bursting with humor, chaos, and raw tenderness." —Oprah Daily "Pieces of Blue is a brilliant and bighearted page-turner." —Maria Semple, New York Times bestselling author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette From New York Times bestselling author Holly Goldberg Sloan, a compelling and heartfelt novel for fans of Maria Semple and Emma Straub about a family trying to restore a ramshackle beachside motel—and their own lives What good was thinking the future only held cloudy skies? Wasn’t the reality that pieces of blue were always there, waiting to break through? When Paul Hill drowns in a surfing accident, his broken-hearted wife, Lindsey, and their three children are left in huge financial trouble. Once Paul’s life insurance finally comes through, Lindsey impulsively uses the money to buy a charmingly ramshackle motel in Hawai’i, hoping for a fresh start. Teenage Olivia quickly develops a crush on a handsome but monosyllabic skateboarder. Twelve-year-old Carlos reinvents himself as a popular kid named Carl. And Sena, the youngest, will do whatever it takes to protect her beloved motel chickens. But while the kids adjust, Lindsey is flailing, trying to pretend she knows how to bring a motel—and herself—back to life. Then a handsome stranger rolls into the motel parking lot, and she’s surprised to feel a long-dormant part of herself stirring. She accepts his offer to help, unaware that he may have secrets of his own. And all the while, out in the Pacific, the trade winds are fiercely blowing. Funny and tender, full of twists and turns and heart, Pieces of Blue is a portrait of an irresistible family learning to start over.

The celebrated Swedish author's American debut, The Death of a Beekeeper is a gentle, courageous, and sometimes comic meditation on living with pain. In the beginning of the winter thaw, Lars Lennart Westin has learned that he has cancer and will not live through spring. Told through the journals of this schoolteacher turned apiarist, The Death of a Beekeeper, is his gentle, courageous, and sometimes comic meditation on living with pain. Westin has refused to surrender the time left him to the impersonation of a hospital, preferring to take his fate upon himself, to continue solitary, reflective life in the Swedish countryside. "I took little walks and noticed that in the last months the pain had actually colored the landscape in a peculiar way. Here and there is a tree where it really hurt, here and there is a fence against whose post I struck my hand in passing." His inner landscape is also re-forming: "This constant concern with an indefinite dangerous secret in one’s own body, this feeling that some dramatic change is taking place, without one’s being able to have any clarity about what really is... reminds me of prepuberty. I even recognize this gentle feeling of shame again." The relentlessly intimate burning in his gut provides a point of psychic detachment, rendering his survival "a unique art form whose level of difficulty is so high that no one exists who can practice it.” Yet he insists, "We begin again. We never give up."

This book explores Kafka's sometimes surprising connections with key Italian writers, from Italo Calvino to Elena Ferrante, who shaped Italy's modern literary landscape.